Red light

16. Sensitive mouth (Izuna)

I was chewing my pen, my brows furrowed. I lifted my hand to shove my glasses further up my nose but ended up stabbing myself in the eye; I wasn't wearing them.

"Oh, for the love of God..." I murmured.

I was sketching on a very strange-looking turtle. I knew I should be studying, but let's face it; I was the best student in my class, probably the best student in the entire English faculty, and if anyone could afford half an hour of drawing a weird turtle, it was me.

Despite, ever since I made that drawing of Toblerone's cat, I'd gotten into a frenzy, drawing animals with eyes containing stars and moons and planets. I'd even started drawing objects with the same eyes; a chest of drawers, a grandfather clock. They were turning out incredibly good. And I was currently drawing one of Tobirama's vases, that moon-coloured one with a tilted opening, with the same eyes. I had always drawn my pieces very gender-neutral but this time, I made it with a feminine woman in mind, making it with the thinnest lines reasonable for a tattoo and added little daisies. I even thought about colouring; most of my drawings were made to be black and white but the vase would be coloured, the vase the colour of the moon, the daisies white and orangey yellow.

I wondered who would wear a vase with eyes on it, anyway. Nobody. I was losing my mind. Not ever Toblerone would wear a tattoo of his own vase.

Toblerone...

I wondered why he was sometimes Toblerone, sometimes Tobirama. In the beginning, I had just been unable to remember his name, but now...

When he felt unreal, he was Toblerone. Toblerone was someone untouchable to me, someone who didn't know me or, if they knew me, did not want anything to do with me. Toblerone was a dream that would never come true.

Tobirama, however, was a man who knew who I was, knew what I wanted, and gave it to me. Tobirama desired me, and he desired me badly.

Tobirama was who he was when we were together.

I didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad one.

"Fancy seeing you here."

"Shit!!" I screamed, jumping to the ceiling.

Tobirama had entered my little room in the library. Once again he looked very cosy, I couldn't help but think, and I wondered if he was playing some sort of character when he dressed to come to the library. He was wearing an oversized grey hoodie and even a black beanie pressing down his white fringe into his forehead, which made him look so huggable together with his glasses, my body hurt. He was, as usual, carrying a pile of books, but this time not about pottery, I couldn't help but notice, but about painting.

"Nice to see you, too", he said with a smile.

"Tobirama!!" I couldn't help but burst out, and before I knew it, I had stood up and gone to hug him.

He stiffened up at first in a way that let me know he was used to greeting his friends with hugs. And me neither, to be honest, as I didn't really have any friends. But after just a nerve-wrecking second, he put his pile of books down and hugged me back.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Because even if he had relaxed, I noticed something was wrong. There was an urgency to his hug, a desperation to hold me so I wouldn't disappear. It was endearing, yes, but incredibly out of character.

"Nothing passes you by, does it?" he asked.

"Not with you, no", I said, to which he kissed the top of my head. He sighed, sat down on the chair opposite to where I was sitting.

He looked at his pile of books.

"I need to improve my painting style", he said. "For my vases. I want to start painting them. Like, actually painting them."